Helping individuals integrate 21st century science with ancient wisdom to make their lives and the lives of those in their relationship networks safer, more functional, healthier, happier and more fulfilled.

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Two
of the most powerful words in the history of humans are “good” and “evil.” We hear
them from infancy to death. ● People are
punished when they do evil things and rewarded when they do good things. ● Leaders of
nations at war with each other often justify the war and the loss of the lives
of their warriors by declaring their cause as “fighting an evil enemy.” In
the last two World Wars – the leaders of America,
Britain, France and Germany did
that – and a vast majority of the citizens
of the nations on opposite sides were Christians. The
English words “good” and “evil” are very subjective and may be used
to justify about anything. In the ancient wisdom text we use at the TOV Center,
which is written in Hebrew, the words are TOV
(good) and RAH (evil). They are used
to judge (measure) the actions of God and humans. Below are their contextual
meanings: ● TOV
(good) – actions that protect and preserve lives, make lives more functional and
increase the quality of life. ● RAH (evil) – acti…

When
Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor and I (Jim Myers) met, we were congregation leaders of two
mutually exclusive monotheistic religions – Judaism
and Christianity. We were separated by an unbridgeable belief gap. A person
must either practice Judaism or Christianity – but not both. We wanted to learn how that gap developed, because we
knew that both of our religions began as sects of another religion – Late Second Temple Period Judaism. We
soon discovered that before Late Second
Temple Period Judaism there were First
Temple Israelite Religions and after the Second Temple was destroyed in 70
CE Judaism and Christianity separated and followed very different paths. The
primary challenge facing Christians and Jews -- as well as members of other
religions, agnostics and atheists -- is not a lack of information about our
histories. The primary challenge is getting
new information past barriers created by our brains. Living
in the Information Age provides us
with more information about the human brai…

One
of the most amazing things we (Rabbi
Jeffrey Leynor & former pastor Jim
Myers) discovered in the opening
creation account in our shared
scriptures is this -- the most valued
creation of the mysterious Creator of the Heavens and the Earth is humans.
Every act of creation in the first account is directly or indirectly related
to meeting the needs of humans. This is a core principle of this wisdom
account. And, as you probably know, the Creator even created humans “In the image of the Creator” – all humans not just members of one tribe or
religion. Another
core principle in this account is revealed by what the Creator did in the
process of creation. The Creator used a Standard to measure its work – the TOV
Standard. For an act to measure up to the TOV Standard, the act must protect
and preserve lives, make lives more functional and increase the quality of life.
One
other core principle in the account is that the Creator did not reveal anything
about what type of creature it is or…

Science
may not have a perfect understanding of evolved human behavior and our
cognitive limitations but scientists certainly know a great deal more than they
did twenty-five years ago. During the same period, Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor and former pastor Jim
Myers were working together to understand the histories of their religions and
their relationships to each other. They followed the evolution of Judaism and
Christianity from the first century CE to today and it was clear that their theologies
were primary sources of conflict and division. However, during their journey they
discovered values and principles from ancient wisdom texts in their Scriptures
that they shared and agree on. An
important guideline they used in their work stated – “Our belief systems will be large enough to include all of the facts . .
.” This brought them into the realm of science. They found many things in
their ancient wisdom texts and agreed with things they discovered in scientific
studies. When they created …

Dr.
Tal Ben-Shahar born 1970, is an American and Israeli teacher, and writer in the
areas of positive psychology and leadership. As a lecturer at Harvard University,
Ben-Shahar created the most popular course in Harvard's history. The subject of
the course was “happiness.” In his very
popular book, Happier: Learn the Secrets
to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment (p. 11), he reveals a “happiness
ritual” that has proven to be very successful. Each night before going to sleep, write
down at least five things that made or make you happy — things for which you
are grateful. These can be little or big: from a meal that you enjoyed to a
meaningful conversation you had with a friend, from a project at work to God. If you do this exercise regularly, you
will naturally repeat yourself, which is perfectly fine. The key is, despite
the repetition, to keep the emotions fresh; imagine what each item means to you
as you write it down, and experience the feeling associated with it. Doing this
exerc…

In
our last blog, What am
I?, we discussed our answer to that question: (1) Humans are creatures that share things in
common with animals and the Creator. They have the potential of acting like
deadly predatory wild animals or acting like a mysterious entity that judges
its actions by the TOV Standard. (2) Humans are genetic memetic social creatures. The
first answer came from ancient wisdom
text and the second from modern science.
Ancient wisdom records time-tested
observations about nature, human nature and human behaviors in its stories.
Modern science reveals objective facts
and creates models for testing “truth claims.” Scientists tell us what we
are biologically, but they don’t tell us how to interact with each other. Religion
often provides tremendous insights about how people should or should not treat
each other, but not about what they are physically. One of the
amazing benefits of combining ancient wisdom and scientific facts in our
research is that we discover things from them…

What am I? Now that’s a
question a lot of people have asked in the history of humans. We (Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor and former pastor Jim Myers) created two models for
working with that question – after wrestling
with it for over 25 years. You may have noticed that use models instead of answers.
Most questions about life are better understood
by using models that reveal potentialities than statements of either/or answers.
Our
models emerged from two sources in which our research and studies focused on
during our journey together – one source is
an ancient wisdom account embedded in our shared religious texts and the other
source is modern science. This makes our approach at the TOV Center unique in
many respects – we combine the wisdom of ancient
texts with the facts of modern science to maximize human experiences. As
pointed out above, we created a model from each source to help us better
understand humans: (1) Ancient Wisdom Model – Humans are creatures that share things in
common with an…

We,
Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor and former
pastor Jim Myers, have learned a lot
about living life over the past thirty-years as congregation leaders in a
synagogue and church, chaplains of law enforcement agencies, teachers and
counselors. We have experienced the happiest moments in life – marriages, births, victories, successes
-- and the saddest and most feared moments – deaths, divorces, tragedies, failures. We have been there when babies
were born into or adults decided to convert to our religions -- and when people decided to leave them too. The
more people know about what it means to be a human, the better they are at
planning and coping with life experiences. We created the TOV Center as a way to accomplish our goals. It is an educational
nonprofit corporation. Our information comes from our religions, science and
personal experiences. Our religions are great sources of ancient wisdom, morals
and values. New scientific discoveries reveal the roles genes and memes play in
creating the r…

Rabbi
Dov Peretz Elkins’ book The Wisdom of
Judaism is loaded with very useful information. His discussion about “Personal Growth” is based on a quote
from the Babylonian Talmud (Bava Metzia 107b): Improve yourself, and only afterward, try to improve others. Below
are some quotes from his discussion. I have reformatted the text in a few
places to highlight specific points the rabbi made. Sometimes, when trying to make the point
that we need to start with ourselves, I ask people to stretch out their hand
and point with their index finger. Then I ask them to notice where the third,
fourth and fifth fingers are pointing. . . . There is a wonderful Hasidic tale
that illustrates this point. A famous Hasidic rebbe once proclaimed that when
he was a young rabbi: his idealistic and romantic goal was to change the world.
After a while,
he realized that his aspiration was too grandiose, and so he lowered his
expectations and said that he would be satisfied if he could just change his
own commun…